In modern times, we have various examples of terms which once had a religious signification being applied to a secular or profane interpretation. A pilgrimage to Rome was, in its origin, a circumstance of earnest gravity, but such iniquity was at last connected with it, that to "go Romeing," as it used to be written, was a phrase employed to depict the course of life of idle and impure vagabonds of either sex. Again, a crusade to the "Sainte Terre" had a pious end in view; but, in support of expeditions thither, the land became covered with lazy mendicants, who lounged from village to village begging or exacting alms in support of the enterprise in the Holy Land. Thence these fellows, and ultimately others of similar quality, acquired the name of Saunterers. In like manner, when the once solemn cavalcade to the shrine of Thomas à Becket at Canterbury, became nothing more than groups of gay riders, who trotted easily down to the ancient city, with set phrases of profession, and certain practices of a different tendency, the tone and the pace gave two words to our language which still survive—namely, "cant" and "canter,"—the first was to talk, and the second to ride, like the pilgrims who visited the great shrine near which lay some at least of the bruised limbs of the hero of his day, and the "saint" of after times.

It has been something the same with the term parasite, which, in its origin, signified an official of considerable dignity in the temples of the heathen gods, but which afterwards designated a miserable class of professional diners-out,—men

"Whose flanks grew great, Swell'd by the lord of others' meat,"—

and which name and class did not expire till a few years ago, when there ceased to appear among French advertisements intimations of certain individuals ready to enliven, for daily named fees, wedding banquets; to serve as seconds in duels, which were followed commonly by joyous breakfasts; and who were always ready dressed at the dinner hour, prepared to go to any house where, without them, there would be "thirteen at table."

The parasite and the fanatic have encountered a similar destiny. The latter, as noticed in the article Fanaticism, was originally he who "performed the duties of a temple, the religious personage, the priest, who in the temple was the organ of the god." Subsequently, the ancients called those "fanatics" who passed their time in temples, and being often seized by a kind of enthusiasm, as if inspired by the divinity, exhibited wild and antic gestures. At present, wherever a blind and obstinate fury in the furthering of any object has extinguished reason, judgment, and well-directed zeal, there is fanaticism. The parasite has as dignified an origin as the fanatic, but the word itself has become subject to more comic yet equally contemptuous applications. In the palmy days of heathenism he too was an official in various temples, but especially in those of Apollo and Minerva, and at the shrine of the divine hero Hercules. The Greek words ἐπολος and ἐπολος signify literally "near" and "corn," and they bore the further meaning, idiomatically, of "mesmate."

The parasites of Greece have been compared with the epulones of the Latins, and in one respect some similarity may be found. It was the custom of the Romans, not only on certain festive occasions, but also when danger threatened the commonwealth, to give a grand banquet (epula or lecti sternia), in some convenient temple, to the principal gods to whom they acknowledged allegiance. The statues of the deities were placed on lofty couches, and before these marble guests a sumptuous banquet was spread, provided and solemnly served by the epulones, the duly-ordained clerical stewards at such ceremonies. In the ranks of the priesthood, the epulo seems to have been of equal dignity with the augur; and Pliny the Younger, thinking neither of the offices unworthy of his acceptance, once applied to Trajan to be nominated to one or the other, on the first vacancy.

The parasite, like the epulo, was an officer of the temple tables, but after another fashion. It was his duty to select the corn for the sacrificial banquets, and probably for the beasts that were to be sacrificed. He occasionally gathered it from the "religiously and devoutly disposed," or he chose it from the crops which flourished on the temple lands. When the corn was thus got together, the parasites distributed it to the various temples within their limits of office, within which limits some were of more exalted dignity than others. Their trouble or zeal was rewarded by one-third of the ox sacrificed. The other two-thirds went to the priests, and nominally to the deities. The Latin epulo was appointed to the office by nomination of the head of the government. The Greek parasite was generally elected; he was not even chosen by lot. At Athens twelve individuals were selected by the citizens as worthy, and then the richest and the most noble of these were elected as the most efficient. In some cases there were certain tribes privileged or taxed to furnish two parasites yearly; and we also find particular families required, when necessary, to furnish a parasite from among their members. In no case could the person elected or summoned refuse to accept the office. A symptom of reluctance was immediately met by an irresistible magisterial process of compulsion, under which the individual repaired at once to his well-known official residence, the Parasiteion. In some parts of Greece there existed families from whom those then important officials, the heralds, were chosen. From these same families were selected two parasites who served in the temple of Apollo in Delos, during a year. At the shrine of Hercules the parasites performed monthly sacrifices with the priests; and in some temples of Apollo we find Acharnian parasites exclusively engaged, whose distribution of offerings gave one-third of the best bulls to the games, and divided the remainder between the parasites and the priests. Offerings of fish were accepted by the former from the fishermen, and were similarly divided; and in Athens one-sixth of every bushel of barley was set apart for the table in the temple at which the Athenian citizens feasted.

It was not alone to the temples that parasites were attached. Each archon had two, and each polemarch one, in his suit. In course of time the fashion or custom prevailed whereby other officials of a certain dignity appointed parasites in their households; and from this may probably be dated the commencement of the decline of this singular branch of the priesthood in public respect. In this last employment the parasites were, in the households to which we allude, something like what the ordinary family chaplain was in English country mansions at the close of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries,—namely, the flatterer, the servant-companion, and the butt of the head of the establishment. As regular attendants at banquets, the parasites are supposed to have first appeared in Sicily, a locality famous for its feasts, and for the superexcellence of its cooks. Subsequently the profession extended and degraded itself, and its members became the prey of the comic poets and the laughing-stock of the people. The parasites of the comic drama were undoubtedly caricatures of well-known living characters. They were to be found under various appellations, but the parasite proper was ordinarily accoutred in a black robe; the mask worn by the performer had a comic expression; the nose was flattened, looking in outline almost like an ace of clubs; and the ears hung down, to indicate the frequency of the blows dealt to the poor buffoon.

The professional parasite, who lived at the cost of his patron for the hour, supped or dined wherever a taste of his quality was required; and at wedding-feasts presented himself without invitation, as knowing that he would be welcomed for his jests. Some of the sharpest of these were showered, with something harder than words, on the heads of the guests who omitted to laugh at the jokes of the master of the feast. When his own comicality was not to the taste of the latter, the guests, in their turn, would unceremoniously kick the sorry fellow into the street, and, by tearing to rags his only dress-suit, render him unfit for company till he had repaired the damage. With a good share of facetiousness, impudence, and sensuality, he could contrive to lead a luxurious yet a precarious style of living. For succulent repasts and a fair reward, he not only expended jokes, but submitted to any indignity. He was hailed by coarse names, often buffeted, and when not too drunk himself, exercised the office of carrying out the more drunken. From always being present at feasts, he received the distinguished title of "a sauce;" occasionally, to give him a mock dignity, a patron would lend him a slave, and, in return, the parasite was always ready to serve as a bully, and more or less cruelly assault such persons as had the ill luck to be out of favour with his employer.

These parasites were huge feeders; but some of them, in order to procure engagements the more readily, advertised their abstemiousness and their social qualities in combination. Chiefly, and with reason, they boasted of their powers of flattery. They would imitate the infirmities of their rich employers; and there was no habit of the latter ever so filthy or horrible which they would not praise as something highly pleasant and worthy of laudation. Human nature shudders at the thought of what these officials sometimes witnessed at table, and which they readily imitated or extravagantly eulogized. They professed to have a patron in heaven in Zeus ἐν θεοῖς; but their profane blasphemy was astounding, some of them not hesitating to offer to princely patrons the divine worship which was due only to the gods. Even some of these august patrons could object to or scorn such homage as this. We have an example in the case of Alexander: when taking medicine with childish reluctance, Philarches, his parasite, exclaimed, "What must mortals suffer when they swallow physic, if you who are a divinity can hardly do it." The idea of a god drawing health from an apothecary's phial was too much even for Alexander, who declined to accept the apotheosis, and called Philarches "an ass."

There were two families in Salamis in which the offices of parasite and spy were hereditary: these were the Gerginoi and the Promalangoi. The former did the dirtier work, and reported to the latter the private conversations of citizens, which the Promalangoi at the table of the Anactes or princes communicated with much flattery to their masters. It was an evil fashion which has not expired on the Continent.

The old practitioners gloried in their calling. "Truly," exclaims a parasite, in a fragment of Antiphanes, "since the most important business of life is to play, laugh, trifle, and drink, I should like to know where you would find a condition more agreeable than ours!" On one occasion, the condition was one of great dignity, though purchased by treachery. The three parasites, or "adorers and flatterers" of Cnopus, King of Erythra, after murdering their master, gained possession of the kingdom by a coup d'état, the success of which saved them from the merited fate of assassins, and raised them to the rank of heroes. They administered a ferociously-abused sort of justice at the gates of the city; violated every law of man, of nature, and of God; boasted of their popularity, when they had slain, imprisoned, or otherwise silenced every opponent; attired themselves gorgeously in effeminate costumes; and daily sat down to dinner, in diadems that dazzled the company by their lustre. When these strange rulers felt, or said they felt, light of heart, it was the duty of the city to exhibit a corresponding joy, and if the circumstances of the hour induced them to put on a gravity of deportment, duly appointed officers went through the city with many-lashed whips, and flogged the people into wearing expressions of devout horror! It was the remark of the present Emperor Napoleon, when writing in the Progrès de Calais against the repressive laws of Louis Philippe, that "every despotic government falls by the very measures which it takes to support itself." It was so with this extraordinary government of the parasites. The Erythrians ultimately plucked up their courage, and just when the authority of the parasites seemed most firmly established by the suppression of all liberty, the exasperated and long-suffering people arose in irresistible wrath, and swept these tyrannical parasites into Hades.

Thus, it will have been seen that the parasites, although they seized on royal authority, were incompetent to retain it. Having exhibited them in so many varieties of condition, there remains little to be added, save to recommend those who are curious on the subject to study the comedies of Plautus. In them the parasite figures as necessarily as the impudent valet in a Spanish comedy. It is worthy of remark, that Plautus jokingly calls the parasites poetae, as being addicted to lying; and it is singular that the Gauls named their poets "parasites," because of their fondness for good living. Previous to the era of printing, the professional parasite, with his jests, anecdotes, and histories, was a sort of living circulating library. Saturion, one of the examples in Plautus, professes to be tranquil in his mind, because, as he remarks, he can provide for his daughter by bequeathing to her his rich collection of jokes and dinner-stories. "They are all sparkling Attic," he exclaims, "and there is not a dull Sicilian anecdote among them." This reference to his daughter suggests the idea that there were female parasites, as at Christian courts there were not only male but official female "fools." However, this may have been, it is certain that the parasite, in his more servile condition, was a personage, the fire of whose attachment blazed up or faded according to that in the kitchen of the Amphitryon by whom he was patronized. In short, throughout life, the parasites worked only for the banquet and the wine-pot; even after death some of them longed for libations, as appears from the epitaph on the parasite Sergius of Pola:

Si, urbani, periberti vultis Arenti meo cineri, Cantharo pisculum vinarium festinate.

If you've any regard for this carcass of mine, Be so good as to wet it with hogheads of wine!

Athenæus, in the 34th chapter of his 6th book, has cited what may almost be termed a multitude of authors, each of whom affords some illustration of the parasite in his dress, bearing, manners, morals, objects, virtues, vices, or unutterable nastiness and atrocity. Instead of selecting a specimen from a book which, even in an English form, is now accessible to all, it will perhaps be preferable to recur to a lively painter uncited by the diligent grammarian of Naucratis, and conclude with the following sketch from Martial, as translated by Hodgson:

When from the bath, or hot or cold, you come, The kind Menogenes attends you home. When at the courts you play the healthy ball, He picks it up adroitly, should it fail. Though wash'd, though dress'd, he follows where it flies, Receives and returns the dainty prize, And overwhelms you with civilities; Calls for your towel and, though more defil'd Than the foul linen of a sickly child, He'll swear 'twas whiter than the driven snow; Comb your lank hair across your wrinkled brow, And, with a touch of essence, he'll say, "Achilles' hair may lack a head of hair." Illness will bring th' emetic to your hand, And wipe the drops that on your forehead stand, Praise and admire you till, fatigued, you say— "Do, my good friend, do dine with me to-day!"

(J. D.—R.—N.)